The logo really stands out, the rest of the site has a crisp clean look to it. Maybe remake it from a higher resolution copy.

For the most part, visually I like the site. I would like to see less "bounce" on the slider on the home page for when you click on an item and it fills, but do like that.

You should run each page through a validator, especially since it looks like you hand coded your site. You will see from the results that there are some simple issues (big one is that your file in encoded one way, yet you define it as two other ways). Most of them look like an issue of probably re-using old HEAD tags in the new design that do not work with HTML5 (big hint here is you have a "Copyright 2009" in there...)

Also just curious as to why you would tell the page to refresh every two minutes? Since it isn't valid for HTML 5, not sure it if browsers will do it anyhow.

None of your pages are using main Heading tags (H1 and H2 at least were not found.) You use H4, which when it comes to a search engine, weigh a lot less. You should start with a H1 that gives a brief, yet keyword filed description of what this page is about (yeah, that can be fun balancing out, I struggle in that area).

Were you intending to do something with the items under "Why Choose Lynden Lawn Care" on each page, other than "Professional Commercial Grade Equipment" linking to http://www.canadanursery.com/ (which I didn't get the point of), none of them link anywhere. It will probably frustrate users thinking that they SHOULD be seeing something about each item since it is a link.

Spelling issues and link problems were numerous, so I just included the report here.

Good job on having server side validation on the forms, however at the very least you should adjust the formatting, as the limited width makes them wrap and more difficult to read. Best method would be to display these ON the form with their information already filled out. While most people would hit the back button and most browsers would have the form filled like it was, some people will not and will re-click the Contact Us form (was surprised in a study for a clients site where I worked once how many people did that instead of hitting back)

The request a quote page is the same thing (visually to the user) as the contact us page.

Attached Files:

Were you intending to do something with the items under "Why Choose Lynden Lawn Care" on each page, other than "Professional Commercial Grade Equipment" linking to http://www.canadanursery.com/ (which I didn't get the point of), none of them link anywhere. It will probably frustrate users thinking that they SHOULD be seeing something about each item since it is a link.

Click to expand...

If you are going to have links to external sites, I'd recommend having them pop in a new tab/window. No sense in showing someone the exit door.

- Over the home page testimonials, what are the giant circles with A and B in them? If it's to signify something similar to 1 and 2, my design eye think it's an over-engineered element.

- I'd really think about combining the contact and quote pages. There's no reason to have them as two pages.

- Logo-wise, I'd work with the original art and try to find a better, more seamless integration of the "The Property Maintenance Professionals" tagline by matching the white of the logo, or vice versa.

Other than that, and the issues Greg points out (especially the H1 and other SEO issues), looks good to me.

The logo really stands out, the rest of the site has a crisp clean look to it. Maybe remake it from a higher resolution copy.

For the most part, visually I like the site. I would like to see less "bounce" on the slider on the home page for when you click on an item and it fills, but do like that.

You should run each page through a validator, especially since it looks like you hand coded your site. You will see from the results that there are some simple issues (big one is that your file in encoded one way, yet you define it as two other ways). Most of them look like an issue of probably re-using old HEAD tags in the new design that do not work with HTML5 (big hint here is you have a "Copyright 2009" in there...)

Also just curious as to why you would tell the page to refresh every two minutes? Since it isn't valid for HTML 5, not sure it if browsers will do it anyhow.

None of your pages are using main Heading tags (H1 and H2 at least were not found.) You use H4, which when it comes to a search engine, weigh a lot less. You should start with a H1 that gives a brief, yet keyword filed description of what this page is about (yeah, that can be fun balancing out, I struggle in that area).

Were you intending to do something with the items under "Why Choose Lynden Lawn Care" on each page, other than "Professional Commercial Grade Equipment" linking to http://www.canadanursery.com/ (which I didn't get the point of), none of them link anywhere. It will probably frustrate users thinking that they SHOULD be seeing something about each item since it is a link.

Spelling issues and link problems were numerous, so I just included the report here.

Good job on having server side validation on the forms, however at the very least you should adjust the formatting, as the limited width makes them wrap and more difficult to read. Best method would be to display these ON the form with their information already filled out. While most people would hit the back button and most browsers would have the form filled like it was, some people will not and will re-click the Contact Us form (was surprised in a study for a clients site where I worked once how many people did that instead of hitting back)

The request a quote page is the same thing (visually to the user) as the contact us page.

Thanks much appreciated. Fixed most of the link issues and spelling, the site was actually a template so it may have been hand coded but not by me. I only altered it to suit my needs.

Two things im hoping you can elaborate on. The first is the meta tags and yes I did copy them from my old site. Can you explain what they should look like for HTML 5. Also can you explain the issues with the form? Its just a generic mail form but I don't know what you mean by wrapping. Some of it was hooked up to the CSS of the old form that came with the template that did not work.

Hey Jeff, sorry I missed that this thread had a reply until another one came in today. Here are the META tags that have issues, there are other tags in between some of them, but this is the same order on your home page:

As you can see, #1 and #5 are duplicates, and actually conflict in their values. In basic terms, each file on a computer has a set of characters used to make it up, and for the basic typeable characters, they are the same, however when you get to things such as accents, curved double/single quotes (usually from copying content from word) they can be different. As long as you just have basic text, between those two won't matter too much just need to pick one (anything that would be affected should use HTML entities anyhow. (see http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp)

#2 I had misspoke on, it is not that it isn't allowed in HTML 5, it is that it is used incorrectly. This command is designed to tell the browser to refresh the current page (or load a different one if specified) after so many seconds, in your case 2 minutes. Unless you have content that changes, there is no need for this, and will actually mess some stats (some will detect you were on same page before and not count it) Anyhow, if you MUST keep it, the correct format should be:

HTML:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="120" />

#3 has an issue because it needs a space between name="robots" and content=...

The Email Address you entered does not appear
to be valid.
The First Name you entered does not appear to
be valid.
The Last Name you entered does not appear to
be valid.
The Comments you entered do not appear to be
valid.

Click to expand...

In looking at the styles, you are locked into a narrow width, so without reworking the CSS, you will be stuck with it. (before I had thought you had hand done all the code, so changing that would be doable, but depending on your skill level, may be difficult without messing up something else)

The big issue I have with the form, coming from a programmer standpoint, is that I feel when a form has an error you should be presented with the form again, already filled out with what you already entered, listing at the top there was an error, with visual clues to where they are. It makes it more user friendly, and in testing before (people do all kinds of studies on the best ways for forms), just giving and error message and having them use the back button results in a much higher # of people who just give up and never submit. (i saw though, if they are really serious, they will most likely fill it out though, but still like making it as user friendly as possible)

Hey Jeff, sorry I missed that this thread had a reply until another one came in today. Here are the META tags that have issues, there are other tags in between some of them, but this is the same order on your home page:

As you can see, #1 and #5 are duplicates, and actually conflict in their values. In basic terms, each file on a computer has a set of characters used to make it up, and for the basic typeable characters, they are the same, however when you get to things such as accents, curved double/single quotes (usually from copying content from word) they can be different. As long as you just have basic text, between those two won't matter too much just need to pick one (anything that would be affected should use HTML entities anyhow. (see http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp)

#2 I had misspoke on, it is not that it isn't allowed in HTML 5, it is that it is used incorrectly. This command is designed to tell the browser to refresh the current page (or load a different one if specified) after so many seconds, in your case 2 minutes. Unless you have content that changes, there is no need for this, and will actually mess some stats (some will detect you were on same page before and not count it) Anyhow, if you MUST keep it, the correct format should be:

HTML:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="120" />

#3 has an issue because it needs a space between name="robots" and content=...

When I submit a blank form, here is what I see:
In looking at the styles, you are locked into a narrow width, so without reworking the CSS, you will be stuck with it. (before I had thought you had hand done all the code, so changing that would be doable, but depending on your skill level, may be difficult without messing up something else)

The big issue I have with the form, coming from a programmer standpoint, is that I feel when a form has an error you should be presented with the form again, already filled out with what you already entered, listing at the top there was an error, with visual clues to where they are. It makes it more user friendly, and in testing before (people do all kinds of studies on the best ways for forms), just giving and error message and having them use the back button results in a much higher # of people who just give up and never submit. (i saw though, if they are really serious, they will most likely fill it out though, but still like making it as user friendly as possible)

-Greg

Click to expand...

Hi Greg,

Pretty sure I follow, thanks for all the suggestions, im going to make some changes.

Ok, I was looking at the residential portfolio pictures, and as I was going through them, started seeing a problem. While I know that most slide shows let you click on the photo to go to the next one, I was giving the NEXT/PREV buttons a try at the bottom.

As I was going through, due to the large size of the images, so you have to scroll down the page to get to the controls. This can affect the positioning of the next image, to the point where it is displaying farther and farther down the page. Now each time you click NEXT, it takes you back to the top of the page. By the time I got towards then end, almost every image most off the bottom of the screen, requiring having to scroll a whole page amount down to see it.

I just tested in in IE (I normally use Firefox) and by the 8th photo, it was completely off the bottom. I run 1600x900 resolution on my laptop, and run only one toolbar, so it isn't like I'm one of those people who browse not full screen and have like 5 toolbars in their browser... pet peeve of mine LOL